Assembly Elections: Counting Begins In 5 States

The BJP "sold dreams" to win Uttar Pradesh and voters would soon realise when the party fails to deliver on its election promises, Congress leader Tom Vadakkan said on Saturday.

Congress leader Shakeel Ahmad attributed the party's poor show in UP to "public mood" and said its performance would be "scrutinised". "These results will set Indian politics in a new direction", he said at a press conference at the party's New Delhi headquarters. The results of the Uttar Pradesh election will indicate whether these efforts have been enough to sustain his - and the BJP's - popularity in the state.

Even winning India's tiniest state has been a big deal for the Congress to be effective in the 2017 assembly elections to five states, and therein lied the importance of Faleiro. That means the BJP has to keep winning state elections if it hopes to achieve the upper house majority that Modi needs to advance his agenda. "The people of Uttar Pradesh today have kept votebank politics above development", Shukla told ANI. "Huge support from the youth is gladdening", Modi said on Twitter. "These have to be hard, tough decisions about strategy", he said.

The Congress also sought to insulate party vice president from any negative fallout saying poll results are never a referendum on any single individual. In Goa, the party tallied 17 seats in the 40-member Assembly, with the BJP close behind at 13. Unfazed, Prakash continued working on what was in the party's best interests. Thus, for the ruling Congress party, the message is clear.

There are 403 seats up for grabs in the state's assembly.

"Just like they did nothing at the Centre for three years, they are going to do nothing in UP as well". Modi led campaigns against the rival Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj parties, promising to bring growth and modernization and to sniff out corruption. The crown should be placed firmly on his head as he is the one who has lead the BJP to one of its most iconic victories in Uttar Pradesh, a mandate that even surpasses the one given to Kalyan Singh in 1991.

The BJP was also sweeping neighbouring Uttarkhand, leading in 53 of the 67 seats out of the total 70, for which trends were available. Shah - known as the "Chanakya" of BJP - managed to forge successful broad coalition of castes in UP. The BJP it seems will go on to win more than 300 seats in the state. In order to defeat the caste factor, Shah turned the UP election as "3 versus the others". The BJP's alliance with regional parties like Apna Dal and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) further helped it consolidate non-Yadav OBC caste groups like the Patels, the Kurmis and the Rajbhars.

Campaigning in Uttar Pradesh, PM Modi also raked up the issue of the safety of women and rising crimes in the state.

Mayawati suggested that electronic voting machines were tampered as most of the votes in Muslim-majority constituencies had gone to BJP. You can head over to NDTV.com or the NDTV News app to see minute-by-minute updates on how parties fare in the hotly contested elections in UP, Punjab, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand. The BJP faced a lot of criticism for importing turncoats from the SP, the BSP and the Congress, but in the end all these decisions have proved to be fruitful for the saffron brigade. The BJP, too, played the Hindutva card after PM Modi's "Kabristan vs Shamshan" remarks and Amit Shah" "KASAB' jibes as part of its strategy to highlight the opposition's aggressive push for Muslim votes.